I am in a group of photographers and we would like to buy a 24" printer - probably the Epson 7890 or the Canon iPF 6300. We will get fundings to buy the printer but we will have to make every photographer to bring their own paper and to pay for the ink they consume.

For this purpose, we need a way to count automaticaly the usage of the printer, whether it is in terms of ink or surface printed. I was unable to find any reference to do this on the web and Epson says they do not provide such tools.

Are you aware of a software or any other way - apart from doing it manualy, of course - to count the usage of the printer per user while still allowing to print from Photoshop or Lightroom ?

Hi Philippe, I'm not sure what the Epson options are Canon includes this with the 6300 (Last time I checked it was for Windows only, no Mac version)

Accounting ManagerThe Accounting Manager serves as a powerful feature, used for accurate management of printing costs and other information that is increasingly important in today's economic environment. With Accounting Manager feature you can track how much ink and paper is being consumed when printing large format output. Costs can be assigned to the ink and paper to determine expenses based on your own "Cost of goods". Each individual ink tank can have its own cost associated to it, as well as a variety of different paper types. The user can also input a variable cost that will be added to the total of the print cost. The data is exportable to a .csv format for Microsoft Excel so the data can be used for billing purposes. This feature will allow you to determine the cost of each print based on your actual cost.Features include:

Thanks a lot for these info. I completely missed the iPF 6300 accounting manager. I looked at the doc and this is what we need. I will also give a look to Qimage. I did not consider the HP because of its higher price here in Europe.

I don't have any experience of current Epsons but I used to have a 7600 and you could definitely get ink usage information out of that - some magic button combination would cause it to print out a report on A4 paper, however, I can't remember whether this was an official user feature or not or a "secret" engineer thing.regards,William.

Consider new iPF6400 - it has larger 300ml hot-swap carts, so it's cheaper to run than 6300. It's also faster in highest quality mode, and there's also a few other small tweaks in the drivers and Photoshop plug-in.

Thanks a lot for these info. I completely missed the iPF 6300 accounting manager. I looked at the doc and this is what we need. I will also give a look to Qimage. I did not consider the HP because of its higher price here in Europe.

Philippe,You may want to look at the ipf6450 instead of the 6300. The main differences would include improved drivers, specifically the gallery wrap feature, the hard drive, the improved dithering pattern and print speeds. It also has the management software you are looking for to break down the raw material costs for you and your other associates. If space is not a constraint you may also want to give consideration to the ipf8300, which after available rebates your final investment can be as low as $2,000, even less than a 24" unit.If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.Gary Barker

*original message had a typo...the 6450 has a hard drive with it allowing for up to 500 jobs to be held within the job management tab. The 6400 will also show the same information but only for 10 jobs. Sorry for the typo.